BUYING A HOUSE Even great men in the East rise early; so, when I arrived before the castle of the great Druze chief at six o'clock of a summer's morning, I was not surprised to find a crowd of black-cloaked and white-turbaned mountaineers already waiting for an audience of his grace; nor yet, when I had gained admittance as a favoured person, to find the chief himself afoot and wide awake.

What did surprise me was to see him clad in Stambuli frock-coat and all its stiff accompaniments at an hour when even the most civilised of Pashas still wears native dress.

He heard of my desire to settle in his country with surprise and seeming pleasure, and made me sit beside him on a sofa in an upper chamber of magnificent proportions--spoilt, to my taste, by gaudy Frankish furniture and certain oleographs of the crowned heads of Europe which adorned its walls.
He thought, as is the way of Orientals, visibly, with finger pressed to brow.

Then he exclaimed: 'I have a house close by, across the glen--a little ruinous, perhaps, but we can soon repair it.

Come to the window; you can see the place from here.' He pointed out a kind of thickset tower which crowned a pretty village set in orchards.